


Even if the Sun is Not Yet Shining

by abbichicken



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: BFFs, Card Games, Crochet, Domestic, Domestic Inconsequentialism, Gen, Hobbies, Male-Female Friendship, Rain, Running, Silly, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, Weather, Yuletide 2013, nothing happens here, rainy afternoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:25:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/pseuds/abbichicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rain appears to have got the better of Holmes. Watson is unhappy about this, but Sherlock refuses to leave the house. How to resolve such a dull impasse? Between the two of them, they'll think of something...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even if the Sun is Not Yet Shining

**Author's Note:**

  * For [such_heights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/such_heights/gifts).



It was the wettest non-emergency weather New York City had known in years. For days on end it had rained a steady, inexhaustible downpour right across the city, and today, a lakey, shattered Sunday not close enough to the festive times for crazy shopfesting, but just near enough to be utterly unfestive and miserable on top of soaking sodding wet, today, the city had just about had enough. The streets were quiet, the roads were quiet, and even the joggers were thin on the ground.

Joan had been for a run anyway - more of a speedy paddle, really - because it'd been a couple of days of fairly grim caseworking - three successfully solved, but still, any mangled corpse is a misery and a brainstain - and she could feel the temptation to stay in her red jumper and a pair of extremely soft trousers with a pile of newspapers and a croissant becoming the dominant part of her brain. The best way, she'd learnt at medical school, to counter these things, is to get out the door before you've had a chance to argue with yourself.

After all, she said to her brain juuust as it began to conjure up cosy breakfast imagery whilst she was lacing up her shoes, she'd probably have to spend half the morning arguing about something with Sherlock anyway, so why waste her energy on silly self-wrangling?

"If it's energy you're worried about, why ru-" her brain countered, but she was already gone.

New York rain is a lot like London rain, in the sense that it's as much dirt as it is water, and you can look at it on your skin, flecks of dust and filth spreading out amidst every drop, and think that you're having a bath in the city itself, and you can, if you're Watson, find that thought rather sweet and curiously natural, even as puddles splash up the back of your legs, and you're sure even the best and deepest bath you've ever had has never been this wet. Or you can, if you're Sherlock, find such filthy, unending rain a blessed nuisance, nay, a personal insult, and refuse to leave the house...but this was her time, Joan reasoned with her interfering mind, and she refused to bother about him any further. Time to elasticate the brain, and delight the senses, she joked at herself, and then couldn't help but think that Sherlock was causing her to overword even her internal dialogues. Monologues. Dialogues. Whatever. Goodness, what a day for a run. Eventually, water took over, and washed away all her thoughts of anything but _how can life be so wet outside the ocean, hey?_

On her return to the brownstone Joan felt, nonetheless, like a whole new being, just like some terrible sportswear advert. Her hair was moplike, her clothing the texture of a wet J-cloth, and her shoes made an awful squelch with every step.

"You appear to have visited the outdoor misery," Sherlock said, folding himself around the door and eyeing her up and down with utter disdain. "Still, your dripping pattern may provide me with some useful observations. Continue."

"Continue with...what?" Joan asked, peeling off her sodden jacket and hanging it neatly on the coatstand. Sherlock ignored her question and peered at it, running his fingertips inquisitively down the sleeve. Joan ignored him right back, because she was used to being examined and poked at with unerring constancy, and because a shower was her only priority at this moment.

"Stop it," she muttered, finally at Sherlock, as he got in her way three times, addressing him with the same tone one might a curious Labrador, because his behaviour wasn't far off just that. "I'll deal with you later," she added, as he started making soggy footprints with her discarded shoes on the hallway floor.

 _He's been in too long again_ , she thought to herself, with an involuntary roll of her eyes. Sherlock has, as long as she's known him, been prone to bouts of being possessed by one thing or another - a case, a language, a need to do or learn even the most obscure thing perfectly, inside and out, but he's never flat out refused to do things on the grounds of weather before. Now, though, he's looking a bit on the rough side, and he's not exactly entranced by anything in particular, not as far as she knows, which is never a good sign. He went to his meeting on Monday, when it'd already been raining for some days, and that's the last time she remembers him going out. He came back all asulk as well. No, it's been too long, and she's been busy with this and that and the other all week, and she's worried she's neglected her...well, it's not her duty any more, so, yeah, she's worried she's neglected her Sherlock, really.

 _Just a quick walk around the block_ , she thinks to herself. _Bit of air, maybe an orange juice at the place on the corner. Get some of the cobwebs out of him_.

One semi-warm shower later (the pipes, the pipes, they protest and stutter like anything...must get the plumber in, Joan thinks, for the thousandth time, knowing that by the time she's dressed again she'll have forgotten it because it's just not important enough except for that moment when you're frozen to the bone and you've got some sort of crime under your nails and all you want is the hottest shower on earth for ever and ever and then some...but even the most mediocre shower at such times is such a relief that she just forgets, because there's another thing to do...and obviously Sherlock will never care at all because home maintenance is the opposite of his speciality and, deduced from the fact that the dial's always left at the coldest setting, Watson assumes he never bothers with so much as a warm shower...fitting, somehow...), she's dressed in her walking best, and determined to get him out the front door.

"There's plenty to do in here," Sherlock shouted, not really at Joan, more at the rain, really.

"It's been days," Joan replied, with calm all over her, "and I rather think the weather is, hard though it may be to believe, an even stronger force than you are. Come outside. I'm worried about you."

Sherlock narrows his eyes. "I appreciate your use of emotional manipulation to make me feel I ought to change my mind, but I say this: would you force a chinchilla out in the rain to conform to your sense of social expectation? Because it would die, Watson, if you did. It would _die_."

She bit back amusement, and kept her best 'concerned' voice going. "When you are a chinchilla, Sherlock, you may stay indoors at even the lightest hint of humidity. Until that time, you should listen to my very helpful advice."

"You are paid as a consultant, Watson. Perhaps you can go out and consult on my behalf. I rather like the idea of being the one who fixes things from a distance. I could call it 'working from home'."

"There aren't any cases to consult on right n-" Watson started, because the only thing going at the station at the moment was something that Holmes had declared so bleeding obvious that he'd refused to explain himself at all. Sherlock wasn't at all prepared to engage with any protest, though.

"I will not," Sherlock said firmly, "set foot outside this house. I am aware that this means that, on the off-chance that you invent some sort of flying backpack contraption, you may trick me out against my word...I shall simply have to accept that as a possibility."

"I just think it would be good for you to get some fresh air, that's all," Watson says, wondering when this conversation turned into something that sounds increasingly pathetic from her point of view. "You're getting...sallow." She said it with a slight degree of surprise, what with its not being the most common of words, but as it rolls out of her mouth, she finds it to be an excellent description of Sherlock's pale, rather waxy flesh.

"I think," Sherlock said, leaning forwards, as if he's about to say something very important indeed, "that I need to stay in here, where the air is familiar and kind to me. Outside is exceptionally unpleasant, and it's only going to get worse. In half an hour, there'll be lightning. And, if you must know, I feel I have been coming down with something and I would rather not encourage it. My body is on a knife edge, Watson, and it must be nurtured at this time, not sodden and wind-whipped. Sallowness might turn to something even worse."

Joan frowned at him. "I am, you'll recall, medically trained. If you are feeling unwell, you'd be wiser to tell me than to go into unannounced hibernation, don't you think?"

"I don't like to be fussed over," Sherlock said, with a hint of petulance that sort of implied the opposite.

"Have I ever 'fussed' over you?" Joan asked, super-irritated, but the question is genuine, because she isn't the fussing type, indeed, she's so much not the fussing type that what she is, actually, which he might be mistaking there, is the guilty type.

"I realise you've been busy of late, but that's no reason to overcompensate when you are finally around to spend some time with me..." he answered, and Joan bit her lip to stop herself pulling her _actually I prefer it when you're wrong_ face.

Outside, the rain kicked up another gear, like someone turned the volume up on the ambient noise tape. The first rumble of thunder came right afterwards, so low and deep that it seemed to reverberate through the foundations of the house itself. Watson found herself hoping its foundations were stronger than, say, the plasterwork. As she wondered this very thing, another chunk of plaster dropped off the hallway wall onto the stairs. _Perhaps he's caught it from the house itself_...she mused; accidental sidebar.

"Nobody wants to be outside," Sherlock said, as he unfolded himself and wandered up to the window. "Look how dry it is in here. A great improvement, surely. I think, Watson, it is my duty to you to tell you that I am concerned by your desire to experience this," he gestures at the dank grey scene "unpleasantry not just once, but twice in one day. Think what we might accomplish if you remain here with me, in the dry, like a sensible being."

"What we might accomplish? You mean you've more in mind than sitting, staring into space as you have been every time I've seen you for the last five days?"

"The crucial part of that sentence is the 'every time I've seen you' bit, I hope you realise."

Watson gave him a look, sat down on the settee and folded her arms in one mildly grumpy motion. "What did you do on wet Sunday afternoons as a child?" she asked, trying some form of surprise question to fix the fact that Sherlock was probably right, that only ducks and fish would want to be outside in that weather. Probably not even them, actually. Presumably just because they like water, doesn't mean they fancy thunder and lightning as well, and both of those are rolling up in abundance now.

"Often, I did crochet." Sherlock replied, with the sort of misty enthusiasm you wouldn't necessarily have expected him to have in crochet. Watson had nearly forgotten that she'd asked him anything at all, so it took a moment for her to respond.

"Crochet?"

"You know...with a hook. And wool."

"I...what?"

"It's very useful. If you have, say, some fishing line, you can crochet it to make a near-lethal noose, an effective net, or even a makeshift rope. Of course, in my childhood I had simpler goals. Initially I caught only rabbits."

"Do you have some fishing line?" It's best, Watson thinks, not to delve into the success rate of her companion's childhood rabbit-snaring attempts.

"Of course. There's a new reel under the breakfast tea."

"Of _course_."

"I would suggest as a beginner, though, you use wool. My first effort was a rather magnificent scarf."

"Aw, do you still have it?"

"Mycroft gave it to the dog."

"Oh."

"He has a very dark, cruel side."

Joan didn't add to that, indeed, just let it slide right by. "Do you have any wool?" she asked, instead, with, she was surprised to find, a shred of hopefulness.

"No," Sherlock replied, deadpan.

"So...no crochet then." Why did you suggest it in the first place? Usually Sherlock's so good with the putting of horses before carts.

"We could unpick that...thing..." Sherlock said, eyeing up Watson's jumper with interest.

"Why do you hate my jumper?!" Watson exclaimed.

"It's a...texture...very bad...eeeqzhhh..." Sherlock shuddered, in reply.

The ulterior motive revealed, Watson threw a handy nearby pencil at Sherlock. It hit him on the knee, and he looked at her with sad, sad eyes. "If you had wanted to cause some injury, even a mild one, you should have aimed for the bare flesh, perhaps at the v of my shirt neck. For maximum impact, you ought to have used a finger-based, darts-style motion, rather than a cricketer's lob."

"I chose not to give in to my temptations. I could easily have got your bullseye, if I'd wanted."

There's almost, almost a smile there. That would really show he's on the up, would a smile. Joan's got a laugh count of only about five from Sherlock, in all this time they've been living together. The loudest (non-manic) laugh of all came when she dropped a dish of 'experimenting' she was clearing away from a surface she'd much rather use to make a cup of tea on, and had yelled in horror as some of its contents appeared to leap off the plate and scurry away between the floorboards. ("I don't see how that's funny!" she'd protested, and Sherlock, in weirdly pink fits of giggles, had offered no explanation. She still holds it against him a bit, but only gently. It was nice, if a touch disturbing, to hear what his laugh sounded like.)

"I think crochet would have been an excellent use of this time. I could use a new hat. And I could have helped you work up to making your own handcuffs from-"

"I will never crochet handcuffs," Joan says, firmly. "Or traps."

"Very well," Sherlock says, looking quite genuinely sad. "What do you like to do with a rainy Sunday?"

"Considering I've already been for a run, and that a hot bath is out of the question, I'd say a good book, or sitting back with a blanket, watching Friends, or..."

"It's interesting that you say _watching_ friends, rather than - oh, I remember. Oh. Well, anyway. Not that. And it seems a waste for us to sit and read."

"Reading is never a waste."

"For you, perhaps, but for me, it rather depends on the content."

"Could we decide on something, at least?"

"Why don't we play a game?" The possibility seems to have generated low-level excitement, at least, so Joan thinks it would be good to encourage him. If she could only think of something...

"I'm not doing Hide and Seek again. Two _hours_ I was looking for you..."

"And if I hadn't had to answer the call of nature, I might be there to this very day," Sherlock said, wistfully. "It was an _excellent_ piece of camouflage..."

"And we're not playing chess. Definitely not."

"It did seem to bring out a most curious side of you..."

" _You invented things_!" Watson yelps, and slumps back in her chair and stares at the ceiling. There are post-it notes up there. She lowers her eyes. There is no point in asking how they got there, or, indeed, why.

"It was most creative. I take little pleasure in the predictability of a game with such finite possibilities."

"Chess has more-"

"Not when you take into account the foibles of your opponent..."

"Scrabble?"

"I don't like Scrabble."

"I believe this is because the one and only time we played, I beat you."

"It was a very unfair situation." He can sound so terribly hurt, when he wants to.

"I wouldn't have thought fairness came into it." Joan was having none of that. He's just been so _wallowy_ recently. If outside couldn't be had, then at least distraction had to be achieved.

"I know," Sherlock said, contracting and veritably bouncing from his position by the window, scurrying into the back room, leaving the fairness-or-otherwise of Scrabble hanging in the air (best place for it: the fact that the two of them couldn't even agree on whether or not to play in British or American, never mind that Sherlock was adamant that if Joan wanted to scrap the u or misuse the z, that he should, in turn, be allowed to use Latin, meant that, even as their first rack of tiles was being chosen, so the bickering began). Watson sat and waited and wondered whether he'd return with handgun, découpage or stamp collection. Anything, at least, was as likely as the other.

It was none of those things. It appeared for a moment that he'd stalked back with precisely nothing at all, but then he extended his hand, turned his closed fist palm-up, unfurled his fingers, and shot a full deck of cards from up his sleeve onto the arm of the chair.

Watson laughed, for it was simple, unexpected, and amusing.

"Memory work, again?"

"I thought perhaps we might play...a normal card game or two."

"A normal game?"

"You know. As friends do."

Joan smiled wide and heartfelt. "I'd like that."

"I...didn't have companions to play _with_ , as a child," Sherlock continued, as he sometimes does, when he's made a breakthrough he didn't know needed to happen. "I mastered solitaire, in all its forms. I can complete the clock at a quite terrific rate. Mycroft would occasionally demand a game of poker, but once he realised I could clean out his pockets without breaking sweat, even that became a part of our cantankerous past. So, if you will indulge me, I think, on this fragile, stubbornly tempestuous day, I would like to play a true game with you. Perhaps it will provide us both with a mental break."

Joan wasn't at all sure that Holmes is capable of a 'true game', but, he had a point.

And so it was that Sherlock and Watson passed their rainy Sunday afternoon in a most decidedly normal swathe of card games. There were fractious moments - Watson is excellent at bridge, but was sadly unable to remember all the rules, which made Sherlock most reluctant to even begin to play, and she, in turn, despises gin rummy, for it brings back memories of an irritable aunt whose desire to play the game was never sated. There was a most entertaining period during which they attempted to create an entirely new game, but it was abandoned quite suddenly when Sherlock remembered that Snap! existed - a game it's truly impossible to enjoy alone. And so they played, and played, and occasionally one or other of them would pause just long enough to make up a pot of tea, and it would continue.

The rain beat downwards as night fell over New York, and the games continued and Sherlock's since-we've-met laugh count fair doubled as the 'best of three and then bed' became 'best of five?' and then 'just one more', and, like children without anyone to tell them it was bedtime, Watson eventually closed her eyes at some point, to give them a quick rest from the whirl of aces and hearts and diamonds and spades, and Sherlock tidied up the cards without a word, and tried to tell her to make herself more comfortable, but she didn't get far, and so he tucked her up, and went to bed, where he memorised the full deck in order successfully five times, before falling asleep. Still smiling. Feeling much, much better.

When Sherlock's phone rang at half past six on Monday morning, he was halfway through his daily meditations. The boredom of them is, to Sherlock, in many ways, their greatest charm, so he ignored the phone until the third time of trying, when all the atmosphere was shattered anyway.The decision to assign Bell a ringtone as annoying as his phone calls was, it transpired, a mistake.

As he put the handset to his ear, Bell was already irritably tetching down the line that it would be excellent if Sherlock could be bothered to pick up, thanks, and better still if he could come in because they're exhausted of trying to make x and y fit together in the Marlborough case and now z's come into the equation and blown the whole situation right out of the water, and does he have to be so damn annoying about it because there is a case to be solved here and any minute now the phone's going to ring with something new and it'll all be piling up again...

Z was, Sherlock decided, a very interesting twist in what had seemed a most ordinary and transitory setup with little more to conclude than that the butler did it. He felt bright, rejuvenated, and was surprised to find himself interrupting Bell with a chipper "No problem! Watson and I will be with you shortly." which sounds so uncharacteristically pleasant that Bell can only make "Erm...great!" noises back at him in slight confusion.

It is the first morning this year at least that Watson's been awoken to find herself just inches from a cup of hot coffee. She's laid out on the settee with a blanket over her which Sherlock must've put there - it isn't clean, and it's definitely got some experiment stains upon it, but it's the thought that counts, and she's not at all uncomfortable. Quite the opposite, in fact. She might quite happily stay here all day, she thought, as she twigged that, outside, the rain was _still_ pelting down just as heavily as it ever had.

As she stretched for the coffee, Sherlock appeared, very close and bending down so he was very suddenly and unnervingly right at eye level.

"Drink up!" he offered. "Work beckons. A turnaround in the Marlborough case!"

Watson made a most unwilling noise. It isn't that she was in any way reluctant to go to work, no, it was just that, before she had any chance at all to enjoy her idea of a lazy rainy day, it was shattered like stage glass all about her.

"Good coffee," she offered, because firstly it was true, and secondly, when Sherlock's gone out of his way like this it's about three times the average effort a person makes to notice the existence of others, and it deserves affirmation. And thirdly because what she really wants to do is groan and make a fuss, but, as we established earlier, Joan isn't the fussing type.

"It's still raining," Sherlock said, and then Watson noticed, just before he followed it up with, "of course, now I've had a delightful recuperation, I think I've come out the other side of my potential affliction."

"Your body's no longer on that knife edge, then?"

"It's positively on the flat."

"I...good. I think." She held out her now-empty mug. "One more cup?"

"My pleasure," Sherlock said, and wandered off to get one. He never came back with it, but, Watson knew, as she forced her heavy limbs to liven up, and her foggy mind to straighten itself out for a day of who-knew-what, that the intention had been there. Even if the sun wasn't yet out, things seemed brighter in her life than they'd been in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Dearest recipient, thank you SO MUCH for genuinely the most perfect challenge. I wanted to write you everything in your request, and indeed, I kind of have, but they're at least three different fics and two of them aren't finished XD But of those things, this is, I feel, the most cheery festive sort of thing, and it's definitely the most finished thing. Going by my mild stalking of your journal (Karen Gillan's hair post ftinfinitew), I hope I managed to hit things you like and provide fulfillment with this one! Also, also, I'm sorry for using all the words where fewer would've done - a terrible trait of mine that Sherlock always exacerbates. And I didn't at all shy away from domestic inconsequentialism...I think I might try and make a genre out of that one day XD Merry Yuletide to you!


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